E3 2016 Recap - Nintendo

This year Nintendo took a much different approach to the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Nintendo chose to put almost their entire focus on one title, scattering their smaller announcements throughout the days following Nintendo's prime time. I personally hated this format and found it incredibly difficult to see everything Nintendo "prepared". I missed a majority of their showcases due to having no idea when they would be shown, and I just think that's a really bad idea. On the other hand, focusing almost all of their media attention on one title does show a level of confidence in their quality and I respect that. Not only did Nintendo spend a majority of their conference showcasing one game, they built what many journalists are calling "the absolute best booth I have ever seen at any convention" all focusing around their newest Zelda title, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild."

Breath of the Wild is looking like an incredible game. Best compared to the original NES Zelda title, "BOTW" is an opened ended adventure game in a world "12 times bigger" than Twilight Princess'. There's a ton going on in BOTW, and despite watching Nintendo showcase the game for around 7 hours, I could still watch more. Not only is BOTW a free roaming Zelda game set in a massive world to explore, but there are a lot of new mechanics at link's disposable. Players will have to keep an eye on Link's temperature gauge, which is directly affected by the weather in the area and the clothes Link is wearing. Not only do the clothes you wear keep you warm/make you too warm, they also have statistical advantages. That's right! Zelda is taking another step deeper into RPG mechanics, which I think is pretty cool. Not only can you equip different clothes but there is a very interesting weapon system this time around. From what Nintendo showcased, it seems weapons are constantly changing and breaking. Axes, swords, clubs and the like are looted from fallen enemies for your use but don't last very long. This is a huge change for LoZ, but once again, personally I accept the changes with open arms. Plus, it will be pretty cool to see the legendary hero showing off what he's made of with a completely different kind of arsenal. I'm not saying the master sword isn't obtainable but we didn't get to see it this week. There's also an incredibly interesting new system set in place to work well with the new environment and traversing it. Players will now have a stamina meter to keep an eye on as they adventure around Hyrule. For example, players can climb almost any wall in game, with their only inhibitor being "Can I climb this wall with the amount of stamina I have?". One of my favorite features Nintendo showed us is the new ability to collect the flora and the fauna and cooking them together to create better food items. Not only do the food items heal, they give other benefits such as cold resistance. Breath of the Wild is looking incredible, and to anyone that is on the fence due to the massive changes to the series, I implore them to embrace these changes. Despite changing basically every system from the previous games, BOTW is taking a chance and changing it up, and I respect that a lot. I really look forward to playing BOTW in 2017.

Nintendo had some small announcements strewn about the Treehouse conferences, including some small presentation about the latest 3DS titles. Pokemon Sun & Moon, Yo-Kai Watch 2 and even a new Mario Party. Bossman stated maybe the conference was so aimed at Zelda due to Nintendo being in a transition period between WiiU and the recently announced NX, but either way their E3 coverage this year was a little lacking, especially from a LAN Center standpoint. In a buisness where games is our main focus, they just didn't really give us anything to look forward to all of 2016 and that's hard to swallow. I believe in Nintendo's ability to deliver good games, but sometimes it feels like they don't believe in themselves and that's a little scary.